New YorK AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 415 
the comparative sterility in many varieties of our fruits. On 
the Pacific coast, where the weather is much more equable, varieties 
of apples, pears and plums which are rated as sterile in New York 
are fertile, or more nearly so than in the East. The same is true 
with varieties of fruits in England as, compared with the same 
kinds in eastern United States. Varieties of strawberries having 
imperfect flowers in our climate, under the more equable climate of 
California or England, produce perfect flowers. 
The subject in hand can be investigated by direct experimenta- 
tion with weather and plants; or, by inferences drawn from the 
behavior of fruit crops during the varying weather conditions of 
past seasons. The first method is probably the more accurate, 
but since weather does not come to one’s making, and cannot be 
varied at will, nor applied locally, it would require much time to 
investigate the subject experimentally. The second method, while 
lacking in accuracy, is more suggestive; is available at once; 
covers a larger field; and for preliminary work need not be less 
useful than direct experimentation. In this investigation we have 
relied on the second method almost entirely. 
What is weather? Not simply the vicissitudes of the season, 
the stresses of weather, the sense in which the term is so often 
taken. It is used here in the sense of meaning all of the com- 
mon phenomena of the atmosphere; as, heat or cold, wetness or 
dryness, clearness or cloudiness, calm or wind. An extremity of 
any one of these attributes of weather may endanger the fruit crop 
at blossoming’ tirne. 
So, too, we need to define the other term of our subject. The 
settmg of fruit comprises the several processes which take place 
in the blossom in the formation of fruit. The layman needs to 
study well the delicate and complicated procession of events which 
take place in a blossom during the formation of a fruit in order 
to appreciate how easily it may be jeopardized by unfavorable 
external or internal influences. With most plants the young fruits 
begin to form before fertilization takes place, though the unfer- 
tilized ovaries have but a slight hold upon life. Any untoward 
influence, even the least, may cause the fruit to drop. © Fertiliza- 
tion seems to give the tiny fruits new life and to strengthen the 
attachment to the parent plant, probably because of the nourishment 
drawn to supply the embryo. Thus this life event usually — not 
always — determines whether a fruit is to hang or to drop, though 
it in no way insures its complete development. Even after fer- 
tilization, successful so far as can be determined, much fruit drops. 
